The Opposite of Music (20 page)

Water sears my eyes. I run blindly through corridors, left and right, right again, taking enough turns that I hope never to find my way back. The hallway is a moving watercolor of white, pink, and chrome.

“Paging Dr. Billy!”

I turn around to find Linda cupping her hands over her mouth and pinching her nose. She drops her hands. “Big brother,” she says in her normal voice.

“
Incompetent. Just—incompetent.
I promised him he wouldn't have to come back here again.”

“Well. Was that even your promise to make?”

We walk together until we come to an open door.

“Those idiots have no idea what they're doing. How many times did I try to tell Mom that this was a bad idea?”

Linda leans against the doorway. “Be quiet, Billy. God is here.”

Inside the hospital chapel, the organist is playing the hymn that goes to the tune “Finlandia.” We know this song from Dad's music collection—“Be still, my soul: The Lord is on thy side”—but the organist keeps stopping at a bad time to practice this phrase or that. We sit down and Linda bows her head, but I keep my head up and look around, at the dark paneling, and at the one narrow stained-glass window that a crowded city will allow.

While I may have called to God in moments of desperation, I still don't believe in Him. See, I have this deal with God: I don't believe in Him, and He doesn't believe in me. In fact, we view each other the way you might view fictional characters. We hear good things about each other, but we would never expect to see proof of each other's existence, either in a random meeting on the street or as a name on a tombstone.

Mom believes that there's a happy afterlife for everyone, even those who may not seem to deserve it, like murderers, terrorists, and pedophiles. Linda believes that anything you do will be forgiven, if you ask the people around you or ask God. Now that we bought the cake and the decorations and the gifts, I wonder who will be the one to tell Dad that his treatments aren't finished.

We return slowly through the zigzag of corridors. The halls are clear and distinct now, alive with workday sounds. We get to the waiting room, where Mom sits with Marty and the other patients. Marty goes to the swinging door that separates this room from the treatment room. He stands there until Dad comes in smiling, about to raise his arms in triumph.

“You sit, Adele,” Uncle Marty says. “I'll tell him.”

“Tell me what?” Dad asks.

Marty turns Dad's wheelchair toward the hall.

“Let's go for a walk, bro,” he says.

Linda keeps the decorations in her room that night. But we cut up the raspberry cake. And in spite of the lack of reasons to celebrate, the cake tastes good.
Really
good.

Q: Does Dr. Mieux, the psychiatrist with a taste for fine furniture, ever reappear in this story?

A: No, he does not.

Marty says he had a rough time telling Dad, as he puts it, “about the more treatments.” When he talks to me in the driveway after the cake, Marty looks like he's falling through the ice again, into the cold place where no one but Dad wants him. “He was disappointed, but he kept telling me not to feel bad,” Marty says. “He was worried more about
me.”

Throughout Dad's sickness Marty has seemed convinced that Dad was always thinking about him. His money problems, his business schemes, his trauma over the divorce from Aunt Stephanie…I got the idea that Marty was kidding himself, feeling all this sympathy from Dad that couldn't possibly have been there. That he was filling Dad with intelligence and other good qualities, like a little kid confiding in his teddy bear.

But along with the quiet and calmness that seeps into the house, something else seems to be happening for real. It's like Dad was a snow globe that had no top on it, and all the stuff that was inside had somehow disappeared. Now it's as if the top has been put on and something is falling to the bottom, settling and collecting, flake by flake. Some recognizable stuff that can only be called the Spirit of Dad.

Pudge starts calling the house nearly every day, outside of Mom's work hours. One day he hints that the museum is about to go under, and that her job will be at risk unless she takes responsibility for raising a big heap of money from the members. Mom talks to him from the kitchen for half an hour, pleading and arguing, but never in the taking-charge voice she uses on most people.

“If it's phone work, I'll do it,” she says. “If it's e-mail, I'll do it. Tell me what I can do right now, Pudge. Tell me what I can do from home, without going in. I can get a laptop. Working from home, I can spend unlimited hours on the phone, and I will get you that money.”

“It's extortion,” she says when she hangs up. “He's actually threatening to fire me.”

“Why don't you go in, Adele?” Dad says. “Go in in the mornings once in a while. I can take care of myself.”

“What would you do by yourself in the morning?” Mom asks him.

“Read the newspaper, watch TV, listen to the news…”

“The news is so depressing, though,” Mom says.

“I could always call Marty if I need someone to talk to.”

“That's an idea. In fact, why don't we see if Marty is willing to come over a few mornings a week while I go in to work?”

And so our daily pattern begins to shift. Mom will go into the office from ten to noon a few days a week, as well as working three hours a day in the afternoon. Because Marty's bar/restaurant mostly needs him in the evenings, he can come by mornings most of the time. Dad will also stay home alone for an hour here or there, with the understanding that he will call Mom or Marty if he becomes agitated or needs company.

The first morning that Dad is to spend some time by himself, I see him rubbing his hands a little. Not in the old automatic, repetitive way, but more of a light buffing for good luck. It seems that he could use a booster, a dose of the old empowering phrases we used when he was really sick. But as of this moment we've dropped all the old techniques and are relying entirely on shock treatments to make Dad better. So, technically, I shouldn't do this anymore. Since Mom is just a few feet away gathering the museum's financial records, I decide to come at it indirectly.

“You know, Dad,” I begin, “everything is for the good.”

“Everything is for the good? What in the world do you mean?”

“That everything is for the best. Ultimately. In the universe. It all works out, you know. Like a kind of perfection. Even your having been sick, I guess. Maybe some good will eventually come of it. It all happens for a reason, as part of some massively perfect scheme.”

“You know, you can't believe everything you hear, son. The fact that someone said something and it sounded catchy doesn't mean it's true.”

“What are you two talking about?” Mom says, putting a ledger book in her briefcase.

With one finger, Dad pushes Mom's glasses farther up her nose. “Whether the universe is moving toward perfection. Which in your case it clearly is.”

“Well!” Mom says. “That's so sweet.” Mom actually blushes, and I sort of want to leave the room. From what I can tell, this is the first time in a long time that Dad has said something in a husband-type way rather than as someone who needs her help, and I wish I hadn't been here. He used to say poetic things to Linda, too. Like “Anon there drops a tear…for the cold strange eyes of a little Mermaiden and the gleam of her golden hair” (Matthew Arnold).

“I would say no, Billy,” Mom says. “The universe doesn't seem to be moving toward perfection. At least, I don't see evidence that that's happening. It's just something people say when they're desperate. Something they grab at when they're drowning. I'm not sure those little sayings really work.”

“But Fritz thinks they do, right? And we're back to Fritz again. I mean, he's back up on the pedestal. He's God now because Dad is getting better.”

“Fritz isn't God. Can't you get through a single conversation without wallowing in sarcasm? He's just a regular person, but he seems to know what he's doing. Don't think of him as God. Think of him as a tool we can use, which is what that idiot Mieux is, and what they all are.”

I leave for school thinking of a line from “Desiderata”: “No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” At first it seemed like more of the same, but it really isn't. It doesn't say the world is headed for perfection or destruction, just that it is going in the direction it's intended to go. Old Max Ehrmann was obviously hedging his bets there.

Marty has been having such a good time talking to Dad (or
at
Dad would be more accurate) that he has decided to take complete responsibility for Dad's remaining two or three treatments. Although Marty usually closes the bar and cleans up at two a.m., he is changing his schedule and retraining himself to get up at five. This allows Mom to add more mornings to her workweek.

“Dad! Come on!” I shout.

I turn on the TV in the den and settle into my side of the couch with a bowl of cheese curls. I move the ottoman with my feet so it's in just the right spot. Dinky accordion music plays, and the camera pans across a wall of canvases. The paintings show windows, crystal glasses, and chandeliers, all painted with starry highlights.

“Dad! It's starting!”

Dad stands in the doorway with the newspaper while the Light-Teacher begins his introduction: “Even if you've never held a paintbrush. Even if you've never learned to draw. You can become a—”

“Billy! What are you watching this for?”

Dad blocks my view as he switches off the TV. Then he goes back to the living room to read.

Mom tells me to plan on another follow-up session with Dr. Fritz. After school on Wednesday afternoon, I am expecting Mom to pick up Linda, Dad, and me. Instead, Marty pulls up at the house, and after killing the drive time with a story about a bartender who may be stealing, he drops me off at Fritz's by myself. Although I've been to Fritz several times now with the family, in the waiting room the old nervousness comes back. Why am I being seen by myself, when Dad is the one who's sick? Why am I being placed under the microscope? Or is Fritz going to ask my advice in planning the rest of Dad's treatment? Mom mentioned some talk of trying another antidepressant once the shock treatments had started to take effect.

Here is Fritz in his lumberjack clothes. Here is the photo of Fritz's sailboat. I sit down opposite his desk.

“How are things going with you, Billy?” Staring. He likes me again!

“All right, I guess. Dad seems better.”

“And how are you, apart from how your dad is doing?”

“Fine. Tired, maybe.”

Fritz links his hands over his chest. “I asked you here, Billy, because your parents, in particular your mother, are concerned with how you are recovering from your father's illness. Do you have any idea what she might be talking about?”

“Not really.”

“Well, from what she's told me—and correct me if I'm wrong—you seem to be having trouble letting go. You still spend a great deal of time at home. You don't seem to be, as I might put it,
reengaging
with life. Could there be any truth to that?”

I decide to withhold my own stare from Fritz. Instead, I look at the photo. Two guys out on the open seas. Well, that's one kind of adventure. But with all I've been through, how could anyone say I haven't been engaged with life?

“Look, Fritz, I mean Dr. Fritz. I just want to make sure everything goes okay—I mean, that things don't get worse again. My mother is all into her career again, and there has to be someone looking after things at home.”

“And does that person have to be you?”

“Well, who else is there?”

“Who else is there? You tell me.”

“Tell me, Dr. Fritz, how is your sailboat? Is she a good seaworthy vessel? Does she win you any big sailing races?”

Dr. Fritz tilts his head and smiles slightly. “That isn't my sailboat, unfortunately. Billy…You have to let go of caring so much for your father and get back to normal. That would be better for him, and for you. Do you have any reason not to let go?”

“I already told you that someone needs to stay home.”

Fritz presses both sets of fingertips onto the closed file detailing the problems of my family. It's as if he's saying it's simple, it's self-explanatory, it's all there…but you're not allowed to read it.

“It's praiseworthy that you have such feelings of loyalty, Billy. I can understand your anxiety about all the difficulties you've been through recently. But I don't think you have to be so afraid anymore, now that your father is getting adequate care. Can you accept that?”

There is this folder, my life, with a big hole in it that everyone is talking about.

“Billy? Can you accept that?”

I'm studying the sailboat photo again. All at once I realize, after all these visits, that the colors and the clothes in the photo date it by about forty years. The person I thought was Dr. Fritz is a lookalike, probably Fritz's father, and the small boy is Fritz himself. For some reason, this makes me tremendously sad.

“So I really do wonder what is prompting you to occupy so much of your time with your father and his illness.”

I nod. I know something bad is happening to my face.

“I guess…I just don't think I'll ever do anything this important again.”

“You think helping your father is important. Is anything else in your life important?”

Every thought seems to have left my head, as if I just woke up or was just born.

“Deep breath, Billy.
Mmmmmph-pheeww
. Now tell me. What else do you think is important?”

“I used to think writing songs was important, but now I don't know anymore.”

“You don't know anymore.”

“No.”

“What are some of the things you've been missing out on since your father became ill?”

“Having music in the house, really loud, bouncing off of everything.”

“Having music in the house.”

“Having music in the house.”

“What?”

“Dr. Fritz, you're repeating me.”

Fritz just waits, doesn't rise to the bait.

“And maybe seeing my old friend Mitchell.”

“This friend Mitchell, what is he like?”

“Oh, sort of fat. A big brain but doesn't care about anything. Sarcastic. Makes fun of everything, laughs at everything. Thinks everything's funny.”

“Does he make you laugh too?”

“No. Not right now, anyway. I'm not in the mood for him now.”

“Well, tell me, Billy. Is it any more true to say that everything is serious than to say that everything is funny?”

“Could you repeat that, please?”

“Is life so serious?”

“Well, that's easy to say now. It's easy to laugh and joke afterward, when everyone is safe. You yourself seemed to think everything was serious just a few weeks ago.”

Fritz raises one hand, a variation on his old “Welcome” gesture. “Look, why don't you call this friend and make some plans?”

“Because he isn't serious enough. I could never tell him what happened to Dad. He would never understand how serious that was.”

It's warm in the office, but I pull the zipper of my parka way up to my chin.

“If you do spend time with Mitchell or other friends, does it have to be serious?”

I picture something sparkling on the ground—a piece of treasure that turns out to be a gum wrapper. Those are my heroic moments, turned to ribald jokes for Andy's amusement. My Best Of's turned to America's Funniest.

“I guess I could just see him but not tell him what happened.”

Fritz nods, a rolling nod, three times. “You can do that, or you can do something else, whatever you feel most comfortable with.”

“I guess—the thing about Mitchell—I don't think he's really suffered in his life.”

“Do you know that for sure?”

“No, but I think if he did I would have known about it.”

“Maybe.”

We sit for a while not saying anything.

“Why don't you reconnect with him and see how you feel? Try reconnecting with all the things you used to like about your friend Mitchell.”

“I don't like thinking about it that way.”

“Then just call Mitchell.”